And what the heck was wrong with me that I was even noticing Drew’s tone of voice? Let alone his fictional handsomeness. My mother had just been given a terminal diagnosis for heaven’s sake. I was wrong in the head.
I swallowed, finding strength in my self-recrimination. I leaned close and whispered, “Understand this, cowboy: I’ve surrendered nothing.”
Inexplicably, he grinned. It was small and knowing and smugly sexy, and I found it intensely irritating. He quoted Nietzsche again, “‘Perhaps truth is a woman who has grounds for not showing her grounds.’”
I stepped away, immediately finding relief from my muddled hormones by putting some distance between us. I held his gaze for a beat then walked backward to the stairs as I dismissively informed him of a real truth. “You can kiss my grits and my grounds, Nietzsche. And while you’re at it, go jump in a lake.”
“Which lake?”
I turned away and took the stairs two at a time, not liking that my palms had grown hot. “I don’t care,” I called out, “Preferably one with no water.”
CHAPTER 5
“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature.”
? Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Roscoe and I drove into Knoxville to drop off the rental car. He took Momma’s car and I took the rental. On the way back, we stopped by the hospital to check on Momma; she was asleep, so we met with the hospice social worker to arrange her transport home.
Roscoe held it together, which was the opposite of how Winston men usually dealt with stressful situations. Of course, this was based on previous experience, which was now eight years out of date.
I also held it together despite my ping-ponging emotions with Drew from earlier that morning and the bizarre, intimate moment that followed. But then, I usually held it together. My motto was save your drama for your llama.
I checked my cell phone on the way out of town, as I wasn’t getting any reception at the house, and saw a text message from Elizabeth. Their plane was set to touch down at 4:15 p.m., but I needn’t rush to pick them up because they would get a rental car. She finished the text with we love you, girl, and that made me smile.
The message helped, and knowing that Elizabeth and Sandra were coming gave me a sense of calm reassurance, even if it was only temporary. I felt like I was surrounded by strangers. These brothers who I thought I knew were turning out to be a mystery wrapped in an enigma, slathered in conundrum flavored cream cheese.
Since Roscoe and I only had each other as company for the hour drive home, I encouraged my youngest brother—who was now six-foot-two—to dish the dirt on the older ones.
Except, there was no dirt to dish.
“So, Jethro is a park ranger? How’d that happen?” I briefly wondered why my mother hadn’t said anything about it. Even though she rarely spoke about my brothers during our daily phone calls, Jethro cleaning himself up and becoming a park ranger seemed like it would’ve been pretty big news.
“It’s awesome, right?” Roscoe’s smile was immediate and proud. “It’s a pretty funny story. Jethro was…well, you know. He was stealing cars and partying, but he was smart about it. That boy was arrested so many times, but he was never charged. He was damn lucky.”
“I remember. The day I left for college he was coming home from lockup.” I could still recall wondering whether I should wait for him to get home or just head out without saying goodbye. I waited until supper, when Billy arrived and told me that Jethro was at the Dragon—one of three biker bars near this part of the parkway—drinking with his buddies and celebrating his criminal success.
Disgusted, I’d left right then.
“Well, Drew beat the shit out of Jethro when he caught him trying to steal his 1971 Aermacchi Harley-Davidson Turismo Veloce.”
My mouth fell open, partly because an image of Drew straddling a classic Harley flashed through my mind and partly because the story was downright shocking.
I stared at Roscoe. “Did Drew press charges?”
“Nah. He told Jethro that he would pull some strings and get him a job as a park ranger if he promised to stop with the illegal bullshit.”
“And he did?”
“Yep. Well, mostly. Jethro never was in very deep with the Iron Order, so he was able to extract himself pretty quickly.”
The Iron Order was the biker club that controlled Green Valley and the surrounding counties. The Dragon Biker Bar was their hangout. At one point, I remembered Momma being afraid that Jethro would become one of them, but he never was much of a joiner.
Roscoe paused for a minute as he navigated a series of impressive switchbacks on the mountain road. In order to reach Knoxville, we needed to go up one of the mountains then down the other side.
When the turns were behind us, he picked up the story. “Jethro had to start at the bottom of the ladder and work up to the job he has now. He got his GED then went and got his AS degree, and finally, last year he got the job as a ranger. Now he and Drew work together all the time.”
He then spent the next several minutes waxing poetic about Drew and Jethro. From the way Roscoe described it, they were preventing forest fires and protecting the endangered animals, and working toward every other kind of altruistic endeavor.
I detected a hint of envy in Roscoe’s voice. It seemed that Drew had a number-one fan, and that fan was Roscoe Winston.
“That’s great,” I said in all sincerity. “That’s really great.” It was great. It was super great. And it probably meant the world to my mother. I couldn’t believe she’d never said anything about it.
“Drew is…he’s the man. He’s really quiet. I think it’s because he doesn’t want to show other people up or make them feel like they’re less than him. Did you know his father is a senator in Texas? He doesn’t talk about it much, but he comes from money.”
I thought about this information for a bit, marinated in it. Drew didn’t seem all that quiet to me. In fact, he seemed downright chatty. Rather than contradict Roscoe’s assertion regarding Drew’s propensity toward reticence, I decided to keep my observations to myself.
“Roscoe, our grandparents had money too, but that doesn’t make one person better than another.” Our grandfather on our mother’s side had been a politician and a very wealthy man.
“I know, but Drew has made all the difference. He helped Duane, Beauford, and Cletus with the paperwork for their auto shop, and he even helped them buy the place. He’s part owner, but he doesn’t see fit to interfere.”
“Did you say their auto shop? They own the shop?”
Roscoe nodded and gave me a big grin, his blue eyes flickering to mine then back to the road, “Hell, yeah, it’s theirs: Winston Brothers Auto Shop. Momma helps them with the books. It’s doing real good. They have a hook-up on old, busted classic cars. They fix then then sell them in Nashville for big bucks to people in the music biz.”
This revelation was surprising, but also freaking fantastic. I felt a surge of pride for the twins and my sweet brother Cletus. Good for them.
Annoyingly, I also felt a good deal of gratitude toward Drew. I decided to push those feelings to the side. If the shop was doing well, then Drew was well compensated for his investment.
“What about Billy? He was in a suit this morning. What’s that about?”
“Oh, Billy’s doing his thing at the mill. He’s doing real good too, now that he no longer has to clean up messes.”
“Clean up messes?”
“Well, you know he was always bailing Jethro out of jail and trying to keep the rest of us out of trouble—not that he needed to worry about me.”
I thought back to my childhood recollections of Billy. Of my brothers, he was the most absent and withdrawn. Most men started working at the mill as soon as they reached seventeen. Billy started working there at sixteen. I was surprised he was still at home since he seemed to wish for escape even more than I did.
I also thought about his chilly reception of me earlier in the day and his comment about my being gone for eight years. I hadn’t expected all my brothers to welcome me back with open arms. I was just a little surprised that Billy—who’d never seemed all that interested in me when we were kids—appeared to be the only one vexed by my long absence.
“What’s Billy doing down there that he has to wear a suit?”
“He’s got some fancy title, regional director of mill operations or something like that. He’s been there forever, and you know how smart he is. He could have done anything; maybe even become a proper engineer if he’d wanted to.”
Regional director of mill operations sounded very important. I wasn’t exactly sure what that encompassed, but apparently, it meant that he needed to wear a suit to work every day. Which, on my father’s side of the family, was like becoming the president of the United States.
I managed to get Roscoe to tell me about himself with some prodding. He tried to shrug off his accomplishments like they were no big deal. They were a big deal.
Roscoe was finishing his last year at the University of Tennessee, majoring in biology. I knew he was attending community college two years ago, as it was one of the few pieces of information my mother had shared about my brothers. However, I didn’t know that he’d transferred to the state university sometime during the last eighteen months.